


A Memory of Terror

by angelkat



Category: DreamWorks Dragons (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Rite of Passage, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27486385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelkat/pseuds/angelkat
Summary: What's more powerful than fear?Love? Terror?It can be either way.That doesn't help narrow things down, though. This memory is definitely forged by something more powerful than fear.But what? Which of the two?How do we know?/In which a vivid childhood memory forged out of terror is something Snotlout had always misinterpreted as created from love. Features that time Snotlout allegedly slayed a bear to become an official part of House Jorgenson.
Relationships: Snotlout Jorgenson & Spitelout Jorgenson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	A Memory of Terror

Memories are funny stuff.

Look back. Skim through years past. All that would seem to pop up are memories tainted by some emotion that can only be either extremely painful or extremely pleasurable. They're typically remembered with sensations that are processed in excess, like light that's blinding or noise that's ear-shattering or motion that's worthy of a throat-burning retch, perhaps as a response to the extreme emotion felt in excess. External details, such as the tiny features lining a face or exact words delivered or the names of the people involved are caught only in snapshots, because that kind of detail cannot be processed by a mind already swamped by extreme, mind-numbing emotion, the most acute and typical of which is fear.

When it's caught and recorded and stored in the brain, too little technical detail is engraved in the memory itself--but there are far too much of the emotion. Of fear.

Fear, which throws everything at a sharp and crooked angle. Fear, which breaks the overwhelmed system by fracturing the memory like a mirror that's cracked under the pressure of a fist swung out of control by a man who never realized the danger of his strength, each of the thousand angry fractured edges acute and irregular and splitting the entire thing so one single drop of the emotion is agonizingly felt a millionfold in intensity.

It is probably why moments where holding out palms for the leather belt to strike, or dreading humiliation via failure at Thawfests, or near-death experiences that aren't always ours, are the ones remembered with the sharpest detail. Not in that every exact detail of the scene is carved into the brain, but that every little sensation is piercing and acute.

The crack of the leather, ear-shattering.

The fabric sticking on his nervously sweaty back, suffocating.

The little whine Hookfang's ferocious roar had become, soul-crushing. 

As if to add just one more cut into the heart every time one even so much as accidentally grazes such a particular memory.

Childhood memory's even funnier. It seems designed to rule out external detail as if that would help soften the blow. The way it is, it's like every child is enclosed within a bubble containing this thick, gooey, albumin-like substance. Cloudy, making it less easier to see through, exact remembrance impossible, the blow of trauma less painful.

External details are numbed out of sensation, as if underwater. Like an egg enclosing something small and fragile and innocent from inside, a veil of armour, a ball of protection, a womb outside the body, because not a single creature who's ever been birthed has ever really been ready to face the cruelty of this violence-infested world. 

It's for the better. This extra bubble of protection--this lack of ability to record a memory in perfect detail--is indeed a womb, a small act of kindness from the heartless mother called Nature who forces helpless and defenseless new life into the vicious cycle, because nine moon cycles are not enough to prep a creature for the lifelong battle no one ever asked for.

But not every memory has to be spoken of as if in bitterness. Every now and then a new memory is created. And, somehow, by some miracle, that memory is forged by an emotion just as (maybe even a little more) powerful than fear.

Love?

A white sun casts its pale glow upon the skeletal grave that has become of the woods from a nameless island five days away from Berk.

Snotlout's turned nine a week ago. As tradition would have it, he would have to pass a trial before being officially accepted into House Jorgenson. The task was to kill a bear. The word of the child's sire as a witness to the trial is enough qualification to be accepted. Because bears are in short supply in Berk lately (courtesy of the last few decades' worth of dragon and human predation) and because Spitelout Jorgenson is a firm believer of tradition, they had to sail out with a few trusted family members in search of the bear his son is fated to slay.

Today, they had arrived at such an island that wasn't particularly infested by the reptilian pests. It was a place where something mammal could rein as king.

In no time at all, they spotted a bear feeding on a deer.

And with the pressure building inside the boy's head combined with the pressure building from the outside, it suddenly became difficult to breathe, to stand there quietly, hidden, quiet, breathing, drawing an arrow, notching it, stretching the taut bowstring across his chest.

If he missed, he would be the first Jorgenson to have never passed the trial. He would be a blot, a stain to the name, a disappointment in the eyes of the only person who ever mattered.

I won't let you down, Dad.

Every wild insect's noise is thunder in the smothering silence where deer flesh is being greedily minced by bear fangs.

The light is suddenly too bright in his eyes and he couldn't see clearly through the haze of nervous breath his lungs are pumping out between his cracked, parted lips.

His arms are aching as he held the arrow steady in its place. A bead of sweat trickles hot down his chin and suddenly his boots and vest and furcoat seem to be shrinking and constricting around his feet and chest and neck and vividly his thoughts screamed red--he's gonna make his Ma a new winter set because he's obviously getting bigger and stronger because he's obviously better than that fishbone of a Haddock because he's OBVIOUSLY a true Viking, and a Jorgenson at that--and today, today, Snotlout soon to be Jorgenson was going to prove it.

The last thought to cross his mind before he finally fired the arrow after an eternity of breathlessness is one of utter terror of failure and rejection and abandonment, before a primal shriek of agony suddenly cut through the air and the bear arched back to cry out to the heavens.

Snotlout, dazed, unable to believe this, until Spitelout burst in an animal guffaw and slapped his son so hard on the back it shattered the boy's wall of insecurity and gave way for joy to beat in his heart again.

He did it. He did it.

He would look back at this stupid ritual thing years later and think that this was such a stupidly simple trial that ANYONE with a pair of shabby arms could do, and he would hate himself for making such a big deal out of passing such a stupid childish pile of crap.

But this was not about the success of passing the trial.

It was his father's words.

"Toldya you could do it boyo," Spitelout blurts, "shouldn't have doubted you were a Jorgenson!"

His father is hunched down as he squeezed Snotlout's shoulder and the older man's breath was hot against his son's pale chubby cheek, and nothing really is so special about it except that it's the best feeling on damn Midgard. The bear turns and bloody murder burns in its eyes when it spots its hunters hidden behind a cluster of skeleton bushes. Spitelout firmly pats him one more time before briefly adding a quieter "You gotta keep this up, a'ight?" and charging forward with a roar more vicious than his larger opponent's and an axe raised over his head.

"Spitelout, Spitelout! Oi--"

Snotlout Jorgenson shut his misty eyes and are immediately rid of the stupid moist and replaced by fire when he opened them again.

"--oi--"

Snotlout picked his axe up from the floor with two hands and lifted it above his head, screaming as he leapt from the bushes and followed his father's lead.

"OOOOI!"

What happens next is a blur, his mind had gone blank and his body Berserk, but all the time he fought that bear to pieces he thought of nothing but his father's words. They were fuel and it lit something in his heart he never thought could burn so brightly. Snotlout's always been a bit of an optimist--if by optimist you meant someone who turned a blind eye to all things rotten even if it meant turning his back to the whole of Midgard to stare at the sun and blind himself senseless--so if you asked him, as the ultimate optimist, he would answer that this, this is it, this is his most powerful memory, the most precious gem in his treasure chest of memories, this is what's more powerful than fear. Love.

I'm proud of you, his father said.

I shouldn't have doubted you, his father said.

That meant 'I love you, son.' Right?

It's difficult, to make him admit that terror is one of the few things more powerful than fear. The only reason this memory radiated so much power is because in that split second before he fired that fateful arrow, Snotlout had experienced the purest, most concentrated drop of terror, the terror of a son letting his father down, so pure and black that he mistook as feelings of immense joy and love what was only mere relief that flooded him afterwards.

Snotlout consider this particular gem the largest diamond in his little treasure chest of memories. 

He grasped it as tightly as it was precious to him, and didn't mind that it cut through his skin and bled.


End file.
